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Biotransport

The transport of mass, momentum and energy is essential to the function of living systems. Transport phenomena are central to basic research related to molecule, organelle and cell function, the design and operation of biomedical devices, and applications, including drug and gene delivery, biological signal transduction, and tissue engineering. Understanding biological transport processes and their applications in medicine and biotechnology is very important to curricula for educating biomedical engineers. At OSU BME, the Biotransport Domain course (currently BME 421) introduces the conservation and constitutive relations for mass and momentum and applies them to diverse problems, such as protein adsorption to biomaterials, blood flow in arteries, receptor-ligand binding on a cell surface, oxygen delivery to tissues, and design of a hemodialysis unit. The research of several Departmental BME faculty (Drs. Alevriadou, Ghadiali, Gooch, Hart, Liu, Roberts) is either based on or utilizes biotransport principles.